StephenKMackSD's Blog

The sub-headline begins the inauspicious essay from Mr. Luce, in a Shakespearean allusion. The headline writers relied on their elite educations to provide the necessary garnish to Luce’s unalloyed hero worship of  former FBI  director Mueller.

Trump will feel dangerously vindicated — when you strike at a king be sure to kill him

A sample of Luce’s Hero Worship, a latter day Carlyle:

Spare a thought for Robert Mueller. He wrapped up an exhaustive investigation within two years of being asked to do so — easily beating his predecessors. Moreover, he stuck resolutely to his brief. Unlike Kenneth Starr, who expanded his probe into the Clintons’ failed real estate deal in Arkansas to include sex in the White House with an intern, Mr Mueller avoided fishing expeditions. He ran an operation with zero leaks. By any measure he embodied integrity and diligence in a town sorely deficient in both. Yet he managed to disappoint both wings of US politics.

In the Age of Trump Mr. Mueller is the yardstick by which all other political actors are measured. This is political desperation wedded to a deadline: vulgar melodrama ,the stuff of the small black and white screen of 1952:

Mr Mueller is indeed “America’s straightest arrow”.

Never fear the Party Line of Putin as The New Stalin makes its appearance with a warning that Russian Interference in American Elections future is a stark reality that needs to be faced!

…

By the same token, an outsized role was conferred on Vladimir Putin as the evil genius who robbed Hillary Clinton of the presidency. There were large dollops of evidence supporting both views.

…

Likewise, Mr Mueller proved the Russians interfered in the 2016 election — as they have tried to do in other democracies. That threat still exists. Mr Trump publicly requested Russia’s help and Russia obliged.It could happen again. Washington has done almost nothing to strengthen its electoral infrastructure since 2016.

Compare the Hero Worship of Mueller by Luce, with David Bromwich’s Hero Worship of Comey in The London Review of Books of August 9, 2018:

Comey’s memoir has now surpassed the combined sales of Michael Wolff’s portrait of the Trump White House, Fire and Fury, and Hillary Clintons’s election elegy What Happened. The book, written in an idiom identical to the one he uses in interviews and press briefings, is clearly the work of an un-ghosted author, and it contains passages most unusual for an official memoir:

There is a place I have visited on the coast of North Carolina where two barrier islands come close together. In the narrow passageway between them, the waters of the Atlantic Ocean meet the waters of the huge and shallow sound that lies behind the islands. There is turbulence in that place and waves appear to break even though no land is visible. I imagine that the leaders of the Department of Justice stand at that spot, between the turbulent waters of the political world and the placid waters of the apolitical sound. Their job is to respond to the political imperatives of the president and the voters who elected him, while also protecting the apolitical work of the thousands of agents, prosecutors, and staff who make up the bulk of the institution. So long as the leaders understand the turbulence, they can find their footing. If they stumble, the ocean water overruns the sound and the department has become just another political organ. Its independent role in American life has been lost and the guardians of justice have drowned.

This depth of formal piety cannot be faked; the passage shows the burden (as Comey sees it) of maintaining constitutional and legal restraints on Donald Trump.

https://www.lrb.co.uk/2018/08/09/david-bromwich/american-breakdown

The record of the FBI is one of criminality  and mendacity pioneered by the execrable J. Edgar Hoover, that was continued by his successors Mueller and Comey: the FBI Crime Lab scandal just one of the many demonstrated coverups and incompetencies wedded to the lies of the FBI.   The desperation experienced by The Midwives of Trump, like Luce and Bromwich, in the Age of Trump, that they helped to birth is thought never to be entertained.

Also Mr. Luce giving credence to the ‘Russian Interference’ lie is that it provides political cover for the Clinton/Clapper/Brennan coterie, and their political allies like MSNBC, Maddow, Schiff and a host of fellow travelers, as the in-order-too of fomenting a New Cold War, based on a self-serving series of political lies. Bret Stephens enunciates the New Party Line:

This sounds like Obama saying that we need is ‘to put the past behind us’, that was his rationalization for not prosecuting the Wall Street Thieves who funded his campaign. Or Gerald Ford’s pardoning of Nixon, to spare the country the ordeal of a protracted exercise of Constitutionally mandated Rule of Law: The Empire must never seem to falter!

Political Observer

https://www.ft.com/content/6c5e80e6-4e80-11e9-b401-8d9ef1626294

The same old deflection by this Zionist Apologist: the Genocide -on-the-Installment-Plan of Palestinians enacted every day & posted to twitter, prove the Fascist State of Israel and its propagandists are jut part of Post-Holocaust apotheosis of Jewish Suffering as Historical Singularity.

https://books.google.com/books?id=IR-EAgAAQBAJ&q=I+recognize+the+gaze+of+the+stranger#v=snippet&q=I%20recognize%20the%20gaze%20of%20the%20stranger&f=false

‘I recognize the gaze of the stranger, the widow, and the orphan…’

Moran revelatory essay continues:

Link above

StephenKMackSD

Andy Divine is at full shriek in his March 22,2019 column titled:

Trump Is a Massive Failure — and Getting Exactly What He Wants

What eludes Mr. Divine’s grasp is exactly how to define the pressing question of what Trump wants. What Trump does is to cause political chaos, and then blames others for the consequences of his actions, its straight out of his Reality Television shtick: that ran on NBC for fifteen seasons, 192 episodes, and established in the public mind that somehow Trump was a Leader, a Decision Maker of consequence, whose tag line was ‘Your Fired’ . Look to the number fired from the Trump Administration, since he took the oath of office, including his familiar Omarosa!
Mr. Divine’s essay is a indictment of Trump, with Andy acting in his capacity as an America Political Moralist. Reading his essay straight through to its end is revelatory , but this last plaintive, even mawkish paragraph inspires what?

Yes, we’re numb. Yes, this has become normal. And yes, as far as liberal democracy is concerned, this is an extinction-level event.

Old Socialist

Here is a bit of long overdue political realism, from an anonymous Tory :

One Tory MP who voted for Mrs May’s deal, said: “Every single person I speak to in my party is saying she needs to go — and she needs to go yesterday.”

The ‘leadership’ of May makes one nostalgic for the arrogant Posh Boy Cameron, who led the way toward ‘Brexit’? But  never fear dull-witted enarque, the self-appointed leader of the E.U. ,Macron, who can’t even govern his own country, is the political actor next in line to ‘lead’ the E.U.? Or just one more political poser about to get his political deserts.

Old Socialist

https://www.ft.com/content/98ec4fc6-4c7d-11e9-bbc9-6917dce3dc62

Headline: Magical thinking crosses party lines in America

Sub-headline: The left may prefer white magic to Donald Trump’s black, but everyone is dabbling

Mr. Luce wastes no time calling to account the New Democrats for their lackadaisical attitude toward Trump. Yet this elides from the political picture the responsibility of both Parties and Pundits, like Luce, in their long-term advocacy for the Neo-Liberal Swindle, and its aftermath from the 2008 Crash to the dismal political present present.Trump is a product of this political/economic catastrophe.

Yet in this thicket of Political Metaphysics, that lapses into  Occult jabber, that is unintentionally comic, Luce fails to ask the salient question: where is the money coming from to support this crowded field of candidates?

The New Democrats, fully under the thumb of the Clinton coterie, not to speak of AIPAC, don’t have an inexhaustible supply of money to waste on these candidates. But to create the fiction of choice might that money be spent upon such candidates, as the in-or-too of lending that fiction plausibility? Also keep in mind the willful destruction of campaign finance reform orchestrated by Citizens United and Justice Roberts, champion of stare decisis ?

While after some maladroit stage management , a specialty of  Mrs. Clinton and her minions , she will enter as the compromise candidate that  offers the best chance to win in 2020. The only real problem with this sketch of a possible scenario is that Sen. Sanders, and his coterie, represent a real danger to this possible coronation of Hillary. So the imperative of attacking Sanders must begin as soon as possible, in sum, The Bernie Bros must be resuscitated and or re-imagined for this campaign.

In his haste to  write his column, Mr. Luce misses an opportunity to think and imagine what might be plausible in an actual American Politics. In favor of a failed, not to speak of a maladroit Hegelian pastiche: Luce should stop reading the Straussian fabulist Fukuyama!

Political Observer

https://www.ft.com/content/cc30e206-4a6c-11e9-8b7f-d49067e0f50d

Polemic is a discourse of conflict, whose effect depends on a delicate balance between the requirements of truth and the enticements of anger, the duty to argue and the zest to inflame. Its rhetoric allows, even enforces, a certain figurative licence. Like epitaphs in Johnson’s adage, it is not under oath.

 

https://www.lrb.co.uk/v15/n20/perry-anderson/diary

As the ‘in-order-too’ of saving Macron, M. 37%,  from his demonstrated incompetence to ‘govern’ France, much less to lead the E.U. , Edouard Philippe announces a harder line on gilets jaunes , an increase in fines, and the firing of police chief Michel Delpuech. To be replaced by a political fellow traveler of Thatcherite Radical Fillon, or worse?  Will Macron’s dependable arrogance lead to him in the wrong direction, prior to the publication of his ‘Grand Débat National’ findings?

Speaking on Monday after a series of emergency meetings, Edouard Philippe said the government would increase the fine for participation in an undeclared event. Paris police chief Michel Delpuech was also dismissed.

…

“From next Saturday, we will ban gilets jaunes protests in neighbourhoods that have been the worst hit as soon as we see sign of the presence of radical groups and their intent to cause damage,” Mr Philippe said in a televised statement, flanked by interior minister Christophe Castaner and justice minister Nicole Belloubet.

The quotations from Guillaume Tusseau, a fellow Technocrat, to match the Macron, Philippe and Party Boy Castaner trio, reminds the reader that these French Posh Boys are utterly inexperienced in the art 0f governance, not to say inept.  And therefore are completely unprepared to face The Revolt of The Great Unwashed in all its political hues.

Two sources of information that might ‘balance’ the Financial Times Macron Propaganda:

Headline: Eye on France: More yellow vest violence in central Paris

Sub-headline: After another weekend of yellow vest violence and disorder, notably in central Paris, the French papers are dominated by pictures of street fighting and by debates about policing, protestors and the alleged theft by law-enforcement agents of Paris St Germain football jerseys.

http://en.rfi.fr/france/20190318-eye-france-more-yellow-vest-violence-central-paris

______________________________________________________________

Headline: Report from the Ground in Paris: The Most Recent Gilets Jaunes Protests

By Lambert Strether of Corrente.

Our own Colonel Smithers was in Paris for the most recent Gilets Jaunes protests (“Gilets jaunes protests cause extensive damage on Champs-Élysées“; “Macron calls for ‘strong decisions’ after violent Yellow Jacket protests“)[1] and threw a series of emails over the transom. I’m going to put extracts from the Colonel’s mail in chronological order and add pictures that he sent; I don’t need to add any commentary, because Colonel Smithers is so lucid.

https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2019/03/report-from-the-ground-in-paris-the-most-recent-gilets-jaunes-protests.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+NakedCapitalism+%28naked+capitalism%29

Old Socialist

______________________________________________________________

Polemic is a discourse of conflict, whose effect depends on a delicate balance between the requirements of truth and the enticements of anger, the duty to argue and the zest to inflame. Its rhetoric allows, even enforces, a certain figurative licence. Like epitaphs in Johnson’s adage, it is not under oath.

 

https://www.lrb.co.uk/v15/n20/perry-anderson/diary

Headline:May warns UK faces ‘crisis’ following Bercow ruling

Sub-headline: Commons Speaker has said PM’s Brexit deal must be substantially changed before a further vote

Headline: Bercow’s bombshell cannot mask May’s Brexit failure

Sub-headline:Prime minister has lacked political skill and made serious mis-steps from the outset

Old Socialist

Headline: Do not let company founders hide from accountability

Sub-headline: Lyft’s dual class structure will prevent shareholders from having reasonable input

Recall Mr. Singer as the purchaser of Argentina’s bad debt? and the fact that Macri paid the ransom for re-admittance into the Free Market Club? as I recall 1.3 billion was the price tag! And less that a year and a half, with the peso in free fall, Macri applied and got an IMF bailout for his failing Austerity Lite: de Kirchner is waiting in the wings: the definition of ‘success’?
That bit of inconvenient ‘Economic History’ puts Mr. Singer’s plea for ‘shareholder accountability’ garnished with self-congratulation where? Examples here:

My firm, Elliott Management, frequently encounters technology companies where founders or longtime managers created remarkable innovations but then struggled with the challenges of maturing products, expanding organisations or slowing growth.

They often respond by aggressively seeking new sources of growth, paying richly for acquisitions that do not fit with their business models or allocating capital towards peripheral activities that fail to generate returns. Worse, such efforts often damage the core businesses that brought success in the first place.

…

Many companies are able to pull off these transitions without active shareholder involvement. But even at the most successful tech groups, allegations of privacy violations and other abuses have been most acute at companies such as Facebook and Google where dual-class structures are in place.

…

Those with the insight and daring to found a business deserve our respect. But once they sell the vast majority of the company to the public, they should not be allowed to run it forever without any shareholder input. Public ownership must mean public accountability.

My selection of quotations is self-serving, but not anymore self-serving than Mr. Singer’s whole argument,that Capitalism, and its companies need investors like himself to keep them ‘honest’!  Public Ownership and Public Accountability under the leadership of Vulture Capitalists like Singer is the sine qua non of  Capitalist Virtue.

Almost Marx

https://www.ft.com/content/b41a9896-4572-11e9-b83b-0c525dad548f

Headline:Emmanuel Macron scents revival as France’s great debate ends

Sub-headline: President plans next steps after national dialogue that has shown his campaigning vigour

M. Macron addresses not ‘the people’ but 600 mayors, should this surprise?

Mr Macron — who launched the debate with a marathon seven-hour performance of fielding questions, joking and sparring with 600 mayors in a small town in Normandy — has been in his element criss-crossing the country after retreating from public view in what seemed like a crisis of confidence following the first demonstrations.

But Boris Vallaud and Patrick Devedjian provide some political context:

“He prefers a direct dialogue,” said Boris Vallaud, a member of parliament for the now much-diminished French Socialist party. “Everyone marvels at the performance, but the fact that he’s going over the heads of the parliament, the unions, the representative institutions, is a weakening of democracy.”

Patrick Devedjian, a former government minister under President Nicolas Sarkozy and a politician of the opposition Les Républicains, put it more bluntly: “It worked well. He was good.”

Does the attentive reader of this Financial Times ‘report’ need to look any further than the items Macron excluded from this debate:

He excluded some ideas from the start, including a reimposition of the wealth tax abolished by his government and the reversal of hard-won liberal laws such as those allowing gay marriage and ending the death penalty. said were not subject to consideration

This Financial Times  ‘report’ ends with an anonymous comment from ‘one senior official’ : ‘more concrete changes for them ,not less reform’ reflects the opinion of the ‘people’ , or just the magical thinking of a Macron political operative repeating ‘The Party Line’ ? Hoping that the unrest will shrink further, in the month that this ‘report’ will take to put together. And will be subject to ‘…Mr Macron’s advisers insist that he will respond with his characteristic energy to the issues raised by the debate,…’ . An ‘actual debate’ would not be subject to any politically self-serving limitations! 

“Their demands are really that things move quicker, not that they stop,” said one senior official familiar with Mr Macron’s thinking. “They want to see more concrete changes for them, not less reform. The conclusion of the great debate will not be to do nothing. The French people won’t accept that.”

Old Socialist

Polemic is a discourse of conflict, whose effect depends on a delicate balance between the requirements of truth and the enticements of anger, the duty to argue and the zest to inflame. Its rhetoric allows, even enforces, a certain figurative licence. Like epitaphs in Johnson’s adage, it is not under oath.

https://www.lrb.co.uk/v15/n20/perry-anderson/diary

Headline: Macron’s response to the ‘gilets jaunes’ taps a French thirst for debate

Sub-headline: A Montpellier window into grievances aired in the ‘Grand Débat National’

Poor Macron, he stumbles over his authoritarianism under the rubric of Jupertarian Politics, that is facing the test of popular discontent. The canny ‘reformer’ would have started with the ‘Grand Débat National’ and built upon it. Consider this the arrogance of an enarque , in sum, a Technocrat of Neo-Liberal Disasterism.

Ms. Chassany continues to produce apologetic propaganda, but this time she personalizes it, with the addition of her family members, that adds charm and an insight into what matters to her, in its way winning and humanizing! Also indicative of a class bias, but propaganda is just that, and no more.

From what political quarter comes this?

If anything, the debate has raised expectations of reform — again — with the political risk of generating further disenchantment if it does not translate into concrete measures.

The Great Unwashed is exacting its costs on France’s Neo-Liberal Golden Boy, whose political ambition seeks the World Stage of the Leadership of the European Union, as his political capital is a the point of 31% : almost a match to the 36.5% of spoiled and uncountable ballots,that brought Macron to ‘power’ .  Celebrated in the pages of this newspaper as a turning point in French politics, as the coming of Neo-Liberalism, not so carefully placed under the propaganda rubric of ‘reform’. Could this be the turning point that signals the end of French Socialism? The expression of a hope of the Financial Times coterie?

Tellingly, they differed on the wealth tax — calls for its reinstatement have been omnipresent in the protests

The repeal of the ‘Wealth Tax’ is a  demonstration of Macron’s status as Oligarch!

Old Socialist

https://www.ft.com/content/3e977470-457e-11e9-b168-96a37d002cd3

Polemic is a discourse of conflict, whose effect depends on a delicate balance between the requirements of truth and the enticements of anger, the duty to argue and the zest to inflame. Its rhetoric allows, even enforces, a certain figurative licence. Like epitaphs in Johnson’s adage, it is not under oath.

 

https://www.lrb.co.uk/v15/n20/perry-anderson/diary